It’s good to stand for something in life and in our start ups.
We hate hummers at rentoid.com
We’re happy to offend hummer lovers. We don’t care. We don’t have to.
We’ve also created a conversation.
Category: web 2.0
As seen on (TV) Google
As seen on TV Google…
Back in the halcyon days of the TV industrial complex, an oft used selling point was the fact that something was actually on TV.
The thinking went something like this:
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TV advertising is expensive
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They (brand X) are advertising on TV
- They have the money to make this investment
- So people must be buying this product
- This product must be good
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I will buy this product
It built a sense of trust. Trust that evolved from assumed scale.
Guess what? It’s back! Only this time it’s ‘as seen on front page of Google’.
The new thinking isn’t too different:
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Google knows everything on the web
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It’s on the front page of Google
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Google has done the sorting for me
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Lots of people must be using this site
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Lots of sites must be linked to it
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I can buy from (trust) this website
The cool thing about this for start ups, is that it really only takes an investment in time and thinking to get there. Not a big media buy.
Uncovering the gold nuggets
One more quick rentoid spruik. We’ve just added a couple of cool things to rentoid.com:
The rockstar list
The quirky list
and the ‘surprise’ function
They’re all decided by members through a tagging system. We’re hoping they’ll add a bit of a social element and in turn unlock some of the gold nuggets we have hidden in our database of listings…. Click ‘em and be pleasantly surprised.
Don’t forget to tell startup blog your thoughts.
Belief vs Policy
Sometimes a belief is more poignant than a policy. Here’s one of ours for rentoid.com
Click the above to see & share it.
What does your start up believe in?
Prosumer UNM2PNM
A certain chapter in ‘Join the conversation’ struck a chord.
Chapter 5 – The Rise of the Prosumer.
To me this is the most compelling change in the business environment. JJ contends that business was so decidedly one-sided; lop-sided in favour of the supplier; the manufacturer; the marketer – that they completely overlooked the producing element.
Well JJ and startupblog agree that things have changed. The business world is now moving quickly from ‘producing stuff’ – to ‘providing infrastructure’. Infrastructure is becoming so cheap – consumers simply make their own ‘stuff’. We’re starting to consume the factors of production, not the factors from production – Prosumers.
Smart start ups ought to be thinking about what infrastructure we can provide, rather than what goods we can produce.
Mind RAM
Our brains are computers. Just like computers we have both RAM and hard drive… even a bit of cache.
Everything humans build is a subconscious replication of organic machines. Which is why Articial Intelligence is moving in its current direction. It’s evolution baby.
So we need to command our brains the same way we do any computer. Hence, best practice is to only keep a few projects (programs) open at a time. If we don’t we’ll lose focus, get confused, freeze and have to be shut down! Just like all our PC’s do from time to time.
Every now again we need to assess our Mind RAM and just make sure we aren’t over stretching its resources. If we have to we should shut down some projects and focus. Just like our PC we’ll work faster – more efficiently.
If we have stuff open in our minds (old projects, tax returns, a mental diary) then we have to shift this stuff to a hard drive – whether it’s a notepad or PC doesn’t matter, just get it out of the RAM. Anything we shouldn’t be thinking about is RAM baggage. A mental cleanout is a must for high performance.
The difference between ‘Innovation & Different’
While watching entrepreneurs pitch their business earlier this week at the Pitch Club in Melbourne Australia, and colleague and I were disappointed at what some people believe to be innovation.
Shannon from Shannon says and I agreed that what many people call innovation is simply – different.
Here’s a clear delineation of the two which is a startup blog mashup of multiple dictionary definitions.
Different: unlike in form, quality, amount, or nature. Distinct or separate. Unusual or differing from others.
Innovation: a creation, new device or process. The result of study and or experimentation which improves the desired outcome / usage of said device, process or creation.
Sometimes we only need to understand the true meaning of our words to determine if we are ‘on track’.